this is what dreams are made of

Dreams had always been important to the man. And why shouldn't they have been? Dreams were often visions in the disguise of a sleepy haze and fading memories, but true seers could decode and interpret them. Stjörnuáti hadn't spoken to a seer of his dreams in a very long time, but he still paid homage and respect to them. Still thought of them. And why shouldn't he?

Visions and dreams were how he had received his own name.

Still, that did not make any of this any less confusing. He had woken in a tangle of lavender and soft grass in a place that he did not know or recognize. Kajsa was absent, as was his children, and his mountain, and so Stjörnuáti did not panic. This was either a dream or another of the gods' jokes, though he was leaning towards dream with everything he saw. Or, thought... he saw. Something about this place was magic. He could feel it in his bones, in his soul.

Standing idly by had never been something he was good at, so on he walked, a feeling stirring within him that he could not quite quell. Distraction offered itself up in the form of two familiar faces.

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@Tove and @Tamir

the staff team luvs u

He’d woken aching. Drunk with yearning, drunk with lust, drunk with everything that made him feel when he was otherwise enraptured with anger and hatred. But those, too, he was drunk on. Neither young or inexperienced as a grown man now, but tired and broken. Wrought with the realizations that the land would not deliver, the land would not bring him his brothers, his mother, his sister. He was alone. Again. Again and again and again.

This time, he could barely breathe. Though it was a dream, he woke within the water, seizing until he reached the surface and pulled himself ashore. Lazed but breathing, alive but dying within. What more did she want from him? Why did she haunt him so? Were the strips of his control meant to be torn away by her hand, is that what she wished? For the soldier, the playful shadow to turn grim, the skin to turn to stone?

He felt no inclination to fight, no reason to find himself at war with a man already dying. He would take the strongest, whoever rose within. But both versions, however crazed one may be, thought of the starlit woman still. She’d rolled his stomach in ways he’d forgotten, riled him in a sense he’d never forget. Both parts yearned for her, sought her out in every dream. This time would be no different as he shook the water from his pelt.

A grin and a swift glance cast behind him. Let the hunt be—he was stopped. Steps halted and his breath fell, but it was not recognition he regarded the other with.

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